Date Everything is here to sweep you off your feet for Pride Month

You know, back when I played My Horse Prince and PacaPlus for the first time, I thought the dating sim genre had truly reached its peak. After all, what could compete with a human-faced horse feeding you sushi or that sweet alpaca’s “beautiful long hari”? Well, how about sharing a tantalizing tostada with a toaster? A quick romp in the sheets with the bed you sleep in every night? Or perhaps going steady with the floor beneath your feet? Well, I gave all of that a try for the purposes of this Date Everything review. I know, I know, I’m a true warrior.

Date Everything begins with you starting a new remote customer service job with a soulless megacorporation called Valdivian. And promptly getting yourself fired the same day. Well, not quite fired. Due to some legalese, you actually find yourself furloughed after Valdivian replaces you with the AI that you’ve been unknowingly training. Ouch, that’s a little on the nose, isn’t it?

Luckily, it’s not all doom and gloom, as a mysterious package soon arrives on your doorstep. Shortly after, you receive a message from an anonymous benefactor called tinfoilhat, who informs you that you’re now the proud owner of the Dateviators – a rose-tinted pair of glasses that allows you to Directly Acknowledge a Thing’s Existence (D.A.T.E.).

From here, you find yourself face-to-face with the first of the Dateables in the form of Skylar, who is, in fact, the Dateviators personified. This bubbly gal’s sole mission is to help you spice up your love life as you use the Dateviators to awaken and build relationships with all the objects around your house.

The plot does develop beyond that, with a surprisingly intriguing storyline that revolves around (frankly silly) science mambo-jumbo, evil corporate entities, and the possibility of ‘realizing’ the objects you build relationships with, but I’ll leave it there for now. Just know that, while the central narrative doesn’t take itself very seriously and requires you to suspend your disbelief quite a bit, it’s genuinely a fun time that strives to give you a sense of drive in this otherwise open sandbox.

Date Everything’s gameplay loop is simple but effective. You walk around your 3D house using your Dateviators to awaken and talk to different Dateables by shooting love beams at their associated objects. You can talk to a maximum of five Dateables per day, but you’re only allowed to talk to each Dateable once a day respectively.

When talking to Dateables, you get frequent dialogue options that can move their story (and your relationship with them) along. Each character has a friends, love, and hate ending, along with a minimum of three collectibles. It takes at least three playthroughs to get all of the collectibles, but the New Game+ feature allows you to track your collecting process, making it easier to work out which ones you need. This definitely adds to the game’s replayability, but don’t worry if that’s not your jam, as you only miss out on an achievement if you decide to give them a skip.

There are a lot of dateables – 100, to be exact – so there’s certainly something for everyone, and each character manages to feel entirely unique from the others, even when the objects they’re based on are similar, such as Abel the table and Dasha the desk.

I also really appreciate that Date Everything has a built-in content warning that you can toggle on and off. If you choose to keep it on, Skylar pops up to check in with you before a Dateable talks about potentially dark or heavy topics, and you can choose to skip that particular conversation if you don’t feel up for it. And don’t worry, you don’t miss out on any progression if you do.

Most of the character sprites and 2D artwork come from the incredibly talented Canadian illustrator Nijuuko. They’re extremely endearing designs, balancing visual gags with a great range of representation. While not fully animated, each character has several poses, and they often change expressions, blink, and jump around during dialogue, which certainly adds to their charm.

To aid you in your dating adventure, you also have your phone (also known as Phoenicia). Through this, you can read and reply to messages, check hints (called Roomers) to help you locate new Dateables, and the Date-a-dex, which lists every Dateable you’ve met so far.

On top of that, your phone allows you to track your five SPECS, which are personality stat points that you collect when you change your relationship status with an object for the first time. Sometimes, certain dialogue options are locked behind a SPECS check, but don’t worry if you miss it, as no endings are gated behind SPECS-related answers.

Beyond that, you need to max out at least one SPEC if you want to get the bare minimum of a good ending, which certainly takes some time and effort. After all, it takes changing your relationship status with 20 Dateables that align with the associated SPEC in order to max just one out.

As you can probably guess by the star-studded team of talents involved (including Critical Role’s Ashley Johnson and Matthew Mercer, Aleks Le of Solo Leveling fame, and the brilliant Alejandro Saab, just to name a few), Date Everything’s voice acting is delightful. Everything is fully voiced, and the performances here are really something else, with a huge range of personalities and accents that complement the characters perfectly.

On top of this, the amount of love and attention that went into the sound design is truly impressive. Every single dateable has their own dedicated theme song tailored to their object and design, from raucous metal to mellow jazz. Additionally, many of the sound effects are voiced by the actors behind the related object, from the ‘pshew!’ that Skylar releases when you toggle the Dateviators to the grunts and giggles that come from objects as you brush past them. It all adds so much life to the game, and I truly love it.

Performance-wise, Date Everything runs great on Switch, lending itself to the touchscreen controls really well if you don’t fancy using a Nintendo Switch controller. The loading screen when launching the game can take a while, but beyond that, everything’s been pretty snappy in my experience, with little to no hiccups. It also scales perfectly to both handheld and docked, with easy-to-read text and vibrant colors. Date Everything is also Steam Deck verified, and I imagine the performance is just as good there, though I’ve not tested it myself. My only grip in this area is that sometimes it can be a little tough to aim at a specific object with your joystick, but it’s not a massive issue.

There are, unfortunately, two features missing from Date Everything – autoplay and a text log, both of which are staples in both visual novel games and story-heavy RPGs. I personally believe a text log is one of the most vital features in this type of game, especially as there are so many witty puns and fun snippets of conversation along the way, and it’s quite the odd decision to neglect such a standard (and, seemingly, easily implementable) feature.

I also find myself a little frustrated at the aforementioned limitation on how many times you can talk to objects each day. While I understand why this is a feature, it feels a little frustrating when you’re particularly invested in a character’s story and you only get a little snippet of conversation before having to go kill time elsewhere. It can also be tough fully investing in an individual character’s story when it’s chopped up so abruptly, and, while the Date-a-dex’s bios and summaries do help with this, I think a proper conversation log would help here, too.

Beyond that, I think Date Everything’s biggest flaw is also its greatest strength – its massive roster of Dateables. As I mentioned above, I found each and every character to be entirely charming in their own way, including the ones that didn’t personally appeal to me. However, in an effort to fit so many personalities into one little game (and one little house), it does feel like a few of them lack depth. Luckily, the massive abundance of other options makes up for this in a lot of ways, but if you really fall for a specific character, you may find yourself a little let down when you complete their story within a few short visits.

Now, I may sound like I’m being a bit harsh, but that’s mostly because I genuinely love this game and have spent so much time in it already, making its flaws all the more obvious. While its silliness and tendency to lean on humor that may date it (pun intended) may be off-putting to some, I think it’s a truly enjoyable little gem that offers a whole heap of bang for your buck. Plus, with the massive range of representation across the characters and possible relationships, Pride Month feels like the perfect time for its release.

Date Everything is a truly adorable, goofy, and cozy game that had me laughing, blushing, and kicking my feet multiple times throughout. It has a massive level of replayability, oozes charm from every pixel, and is very clearly made with love. While it may not be perfect, no relationship is. So, if the trailers appeal to you, I implore you to give it a try. For its relatively low price point, I doubt you’ll regret it.

For more romance on the go, head over to our lists of the best otome games and the best dating games. Or, if you’re done with your search for love and want something else to play, be sure to check out our guides to the best Switch games and our most anticipated new Switch games. We’ve also got all the details you could want on the Nintendo Switch 2, including our guides to the best Nintendo Switch 2 accessories and the best Nintendo Switch 2 controllers.